Reality Construction as Problem Oriented Decomposition : between (social) Constructivism and Realism

By constructing realities, we try to make the stream of our experiences manageable. Reality construction thus takes place in a context of continuous problem orientation. What basically drives reality construction is not some all-compassing plan, but an unremitting flow of problem orientation. The results are not neatly ordered patterns of separable elements, but large nets of constructs, with complex interdependencies. The construction of reality must be understood in terms of its problem orientation. We have to face the interconnectedness of the constructs, including social and temporal interconnections. We should not try to decompose the interconnections by means of prefabricated universal schemes. Only by specifying our own problem orientation in studying the construction of reality, we can come to a well-considered choice of a decomposition strategy. INTRODUCTION : NAVIGATION WITHOUT REFERENCE In a broad sense, the term ’constructivism’ refers to the idea that what we see as reality must not be understood as an objective representation of something outside of us, but as something that we create ourselves, something for which we are ourselves responsible. Watzlawick speaks of ’invented reality’ (as opposed to ’discovered reality’), and elaborates this concept 1 Paul Watzlawick (ed.) : The invented reality, 1984, Norton & Co, New York